Ski Special
Shaun White Wants to Give Snowboarding the Formula One Treatment
The sport is more popular, and the athletes are better than ever. Why can’t they get paid?
White says the lack of economic opportunity, on top of a fragmented snowboarding competition structure, is “the sport’s worst enemy.”
Photographer: Michael Dawson
The most dangerous feat in snowboarding six years ago was the cab double cork 1440. It required athletes to drop backward into a halfpipe, flip twice and spin four full rotations at more than 22 feet in the air.
While trying to perfect it before the 2018 Winter Olympics, both Shaun White and his main rival, Ayumu Hirano of Japan, ended up in the hospital. White walked away with some five dozen stitches to his face and Hirano with injuries to his liver and left knee that were inches away from being much worse.